Chart axis labels truncated in Excel 2007

**JRandom** · 01-26-2011, 03:44 PM

I was wondering if anyone could shed some insight on an issue I'm having.

I have some standard bar charts that look great in Excel 2000/2002. But when I open the workbook in Excel 2007, the axis data labels are cut off after a single letter. It's the x-axis labels, not the axis title or data labels. See the attached image for what I mean.

I've looked around for possible fixes, but none of the following work:

Adding spaces or periods after the label texts
Changing the zoom or screen resolution
Checking print preview to see if looks okay then

Does anyone have any ideas? I'd make new charts in Excel 2007 but there are a lot of them to make, and I don't know if it will just happen again!

**teylyn** · 01-26-2011, 04:00 PM

Hello,

it looks as if the fonts are bigger in Excel 2007. You could

- change the font size of the axis labels
- resize the plot area (make it smaller) so there is more room for the labels.

cheers,

**JRandom** · 01-26-2011, 07:23 PM

Originally Posted by teylyn

- change the font size of the axis labels
- resize the plot area (make it smaller) so there is more room for the labels.

Hi, thanks for the post.

Unfortunately, it's not just the fonts. Changing the font has no real effect, unless I change it to an unreadable size 4 or 5.

And resizing the plot area to make more room for the labels is exactly what I want to do, but there don't seem to be any grab-handles for the plot area. Is there a way to do this that I'm missing?

**teylyn** · 01-26-2011, 08:18 PM

Select the chart, then click the Layout tab in the Chart Tools. in the upper left corner of that ribbon is a drop down box to select chart elements. Select Plot Area and you should see the sizing handles for the plot area.